‘I’m sorry,’ she said. She could not say that it was because of the dream. Everything going wrong because of the dream. She started to drink her glass of water. Nile water beautiful after thirst, alhamdulillah.
‘Electricity isn’t free,’ said Mahasen. She was sitting on one of the beds putting Hanan’s baby to sleep, patting him on the back as he lay on his side facing the wall. Hanan was still at work. She worked longer hours than Sammar, she was more productive, more efficient. The baby raised his head up and smiled at Sammar. She smiled back, mouthed his name silently. Mahasen patted him harder. ‘Come on, sleep!’ she said to him.
Sammar felt that her aunt wanted to say more, that there was more to come after the statement ‘Electricity isn’t free.’ She escaped, went to the bedroom to change, then called Amir to give him a shower so that he could be clean before he ate. He talked to her while she towelled and dressed him but she was not listening, her mind numb behind her dry eyes, the fear that she was somehow not going to able to complete the day, that it was too long, too much of a challenge. Even when she prayed she still felt a tightness inside, a sense of foreboding.
The main meal of the day served as usual and Hanan’s twins were brought down by their father, who went upstairs again. The children sat on the stools around the table. The clutter of plastic dishes, murmurs from her, ‘Say bismillah before you eat. Be good and finish your plate.’ They were sometimes lively, sometimes quiet. Today after the first few mouthfuls it was as if devils danced around the house, skipped on top of the furniture, goaded the children. Rice scattered everywhere, there were screeches, fights, rice grains in noses and ears. Amir pinched Dalia, stuck his tongue out at her. Dalia bit Amir, leaving saliva, chewed rice and ridges on his arm. He pulled her hair, yanked it and she screamed, a scream so loud that it seemed incredible to Sammar, as she pulled them apart, that such a noise could come out of someone Dalia’s size. Devils danced around the room making everything a blur in front of Sammar’s eyes. Millions of children babbling away, the rattle and the din of plastic plates and she in the middle of it, immersed, hypnotised. Dalia’s scream woke the baby, his arms grasped the air, his face scrunched with anger, his own kind of screaming. Mahasen picked him up and started to rock him in her arms. If he did not have a proper nap, he was grumpy the rest of the day.
‘Make them quiet,’ Mahasen shouted. ‘Do something, Sammar, instead of staring at them like an idiot.’
But the children were wild, stronger than her. They rotated around the room, shouting, kicking. They ran too fast. At last Hanan appeared at the door like a hero, solid and in control, dignified in her dentist’s working clothes. She smacked Dalia, picked up her screaming baby and herded her messy twins upstairs. She left Sammar with Dalia whimpering and cringing, and a dull calmness all around the room. As if nothing had happened, Amir arranged his toy cars on the floor, talked to them and pushed them carefully from the carpet to the tiles.
‘All this is because you are useless,’ said her aunt. ‘A few children and you don’t know how to handle them. I don’t know what happened to you. In the past you were lively and strong, now you’ve just become an idiot.’
She wanted to escape from her aunt but Dalia was clinging to her, sticky and limp. She wanted to escape into cleaning the room, sweeping up the rice that was scattered on the table and on the floor.
‘You don’t even have a proper job, a job that pays. How much have you been contributing to the house?’
‘Not much,’ her voice flat, obedient, answering how Mahasen wanted her to answer.
‘And content to wear others’ clothes, without any pride.’
That was true. She had been passed on a whole wardrobe of Hanan’s, clothes that were too tight for her after having the baby, didn’t fit anymore. And it was also true, that she had no pride. The clothes, when Hanan offered them, had made her happy. They were loose on her, long. Hanan had been nice, she had said, as Sammar tried each thing on, looking at herself in the full length mirror, turning this way and that, ‘Everything looks lovely on you, Sammar.’ Now her aunt was making it all dirty, wanting her to feel ashamed.
‘You should go back to England, work there and send us things.’
‘I don’t want to go back.’
‘We buried the deceased and you went around saying, “It’s a good thing he left me with one child, not three or four, what would I have done with them?” A thing to say. It shows how low you are, with no manners, no respect for his memory. Now you have this one child and you don’t even want to take him to England and look out for his benefit.’
She wanted to wash the dishes, smell soap, the soothing fall of the water on spoons and plates, but she was pinned down by Dalia, her little sobs, her head on her lap. Someone must have repeated her words to Mahasen. She had never told Mahasen that she was glad she had only one child. And now all this could lead to the old quarrel about ‘Am Ahmed, bringing that up all over again…
‘I know what happened,’ her aunt went on, her voice and the steady roar of the air cooler. ‘I know why you came back. They fired you, didn’t they, because you didn’t do the work well? Don’t think I’m fooled by this story of you going to Waleed and sending off a resignation letter or the rubbish you said about being homesick for your country. Foreigners don’t stand for nonsense, I know. Their countries wouldn’t be so advanced if they did,’ she gestured vaguely at the unlit screen of the television, her source of knowledge about the world. ‘You were just no good and they told you to leave.’
‘No.’ She stared down at Dalia’s head on her lap, her hair sticking out of the braids.
‘You’re a liar.’
‘I’m not a liar.’ She smoothed Dalia’s hair, her hands cold, clumsy.
‘You’re a liar and you killed my son.’
She shook her head, not sure if her aunt meant what she said and it was not her muddled mind that was imagining it all. It was not a line from an Egyptian soap that her aunt was repeating. ‘You killed my son,’ Mahasen had actually spoken those words out loud. Now on her face there was a kind of triumph as if she had finally, from deep inside, pulled out what she had always wanted to say.
The denial stuck in Sammar’s throat.
‘You nagged him to buy that car,’ her aunt’s words were focused now, distinct. ‘You nagged him day and night and he sent for money.’
Sammar shook her head. She hadn’t known, she hadn’t known that he was short of money, that he had asked his mother. ‘He didn’t tell me,’ she said breathing through the fear, the fear that her mind would bend, surrender to this madness, accept the accusation, live forever with the guilt.
‘You nagged him for that car and that car killed him. He wrote and said, “Please, Mama, help me, Sammar’s getting on my nerves, saying it’s cold, it’s too cold to walk everywhere, let’s get a car.” Then I sent him the money.’
Tarig wrote to Mahasen, complaining… Sammar’s getting on my nerves… It sounded so much like him, the way he would speak, Sammar’s getting on my nerves. It jumped up at her in spite of the years, in spite of the gulf between their world and his. It sounded so much like him, the way he would speak. The way he spoke to his mother sometimes, as if there was some kind of conspiracy against him, threatening his career. He had been like that… Sammar tried to remember the time before they bought the car, she tried to remember nagging him. It was years ago. He hadn’t told her he was short of money, he hadn’t told her that he had written to Mahasen asking for money. She had thought he wanted a car as much as she did. And now he was not here for her to ask him. Her aunt’s words hung in the air, a banner of victory, they could not be contradicted or denied.